Thursday, 26 December 2013

Royal College Street bike path in Camden. Soon to be extended both north and south

I'm starting to hear some fairly interesting noises about the central London cycling grid, a proposed network of "routes for people who want to cycle slowly, in their ordinary clothes, away from most of the traffic". Phil Jones, the councillor responsible for transport in Camden council (and a great protagonist of the recently-launched Royal College Street cycle way pictured above) announced on twitter that the Royal College Street scheme will be extended next year (I believe up towards Kentish Town and down into central London). He also hinted at restrictions to motor traffic on Tavistock Place - the hugely popular east-west bike route across Bloomsbury. That bike route is operating way above the capacity it is built for with big queues of people cycling in the morning along very narrow and weirdly-laid-out bike tracks. By reducing through motor traffic here, the council can provide much better infrastructure for cycling and enable greater capacity of bikes than the route can currently handle.

Map of the proposed central London bike grid

Also in Camden, cycling will be finally be allowed on the contraflow bus lane that leads between Theobolds Road and New Oxford Street. This is really overdue. The changes should come into effect in the New Year. As Voleospeed blog points out, cyclists already use the bus contraflow because it is safer than having to fling yourself around the madness of Holborn gyratory but they are consistently being fined by the police for doing so. This is practically the only section of bus lane in London that is out of bounds to people on bikes as well and it is completely ridiculous it was ever allowed to go ahead on this basis in the first place given there are near identical road layouts elsewhere where bikes are allowed (think London Road near Elephant & Castle). It is good that Camden and TfL are finally rectifying this insane situation.

It is absurd that bus use is declining and private car use increasing while bike use is flatlining. Our city is getting more and more crowded as its population grows. A transport policy that discourages highly efficient use of roads by bus transport and bike transport while increasing car use is bad for congestion, bad for pollution, bad for business and, ultimately the result of short-sighted policy-making in the recent past. That needs to change. And local authorities like Westminster can't be allowed to pursue policies that further privilege motor traffic at the cost of bus and bike.

The strategy is to deliver what Westminster calls a network of 'well-signposted, direct and continuous cycle routes' through central London. Pictured above is one of those 'direct and continuous cycle routes'. The Jubilee Line will take you from St. James's Park, up Bond Street to north of Oxford Street. Now, the big and positive thing about this is that you will - by the looks of it - be able to bike north up Bond Street and that is a big deal indeed. But just look at the insane amount of back and forth you'll have to do to line up with the stretch on Bond Street. No-one in their right mind is going to use this is they face a literal maze of one-way streets just to connect with the clear stretch along Bond Street.

Or take a look at the stretch north of Oxford Street along New Cavendish Street. This route links with the main east-west bike track on Camden's streets across towards Bloomsbury and ultimately Islington. This looks like wiggle central. If you're in a car you can storm down three-lanes of New Cavendish Street but it looks to me like Westminster wants people on bikes to take the least direct, most convoluted route possible. Why not create space for cycling along the more direct route here, namely along New Cavendish Street and then in to George Street?

And what is critical, of course, is to actually make space for cycling. Some of these streets are already part of the London Cycle Network within Westminster. But the carriageway is filled with parked cars and with multiple lanes of fast-flowing motor traffic. Some of these routes aren't going to work unless that changes and they'll be nothing more than highly windy, convoluted ideas that no-one uses.

I'm also not at all sure what is going on a Trafalgar Square. You'd have to come up the Mall, do a left a right, a left, a right and right again, all to wiggle around and get yourself aligned with Whitcomb Street. Pretty messy if you ask me.

I'm sure it must be a mistake but the bike track through the middle of Hyde Park Corner disappears on this map, replaced instead with a jolly ride around a six lane gyratory. It's a bit like publishing a map of London and putting the M4 down the Grand Union Canal towpath.I'd urge people to take a look at the map and look for similar crazy routes. Where you see a dotted line route and a full-line route, assume that the dotted line is an alternative proposal.